breath of life
by lydiamartins
Summary: When I was younger, I was 'little-miss-perfect'; all A's, maybe a B in math but the tutor would always help. On the weekends, I would go shopping with my mom and work at the horse farms - they loved me. And then, we couldn't afford a tutor . . . the horses lost all of their hair, and my mom sort of lost her mind -— meenacentric


**summary; So, she closes her eyes, bottles up her emotions, releases them upon the pillow at night and smooths them away in the morning and then Meena looks like the _perfectprettyskinny _daughter she must be; meenacentric, for coppertone wars' twelve days of christmas challenge, level six, part three!**

**notes; bc rl right now is messed-up and i wanted to write something equally messed-up or something like that um hope you like this, c: thoughts and dialogue are all in italics, by the way**

**breath of life**  
meenacentric

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_"Oh the places you'll go! There is fun to be done! There are points to be scored. There are games to be won. And the magical things you can do with that ball will make you the winning-est winner of all." -— dr. seuss, oh, the places you'll go!_

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Meena sits on the bus, thighs concealed by purple leggings which squeeze bulbous cellulite, foundation covered cheek, cheek resting against the pane of the windows — she traces initials and cotangent function graphs on the window, blowing warm breath as it wipes the images away; she sits in uncomfortable silence for the duration of the bus ride, pretending as though somebody who's supposed to be her best friend isn't sitting right next to her.

There's a moment of silence — Layne gets off of the bus, and Meena's alone once again.

She stares out of the window, periodically tapping on her phone, and wonders why she could never be a normal girl; everybody knows those girls, the ones that all the boys would love to date and all the girls want to be? When you're walking down the halls, and are pushed grimly to the side with saccharine smiles and flashy comebacks, anger forming in the corner of their sparkling eyes, you might catch a glimpse of the real the, _just waiting there_, because after all, secrets are meant to be told.

They'll randomly appear when you're talking to that latest crush of yours, the one with the floppy black hair and mismatched green and blue eyes, stealing him away with a flirty wave and a coy wink, sometimes even just an interested glance. Every neighborhood has those girls —in Westchester, they're known as the Pretty Committee. But Meena can never be one of them, no matter how hard she tries.

.

She sits in the back of class, legs half-way crossed; her bulbous thighs brush against one another, cellulite layers somewhat concealed by the lace forest green camisole which is pulled down to mid-thigh and occasionally springs back up, exposing the rocky road ice cream which is practically inhaled through corrupted lungs and sticks in the crevices of her thighs. Forest green leg warmers stick out from brown boots, rosin remains or something akin to dried mud remains on their bottoms. Meena traces Lewis structures and electron configurations with 0.7 lead on the front of her hand. Her purple-red nail polish chips near the bottom, falling onto worn dark skin which peels by the nail; darkened knuckles flex in irritation and Meena holds an unfazed expression as Massie Block perches on the edge of the orchestra rooms' piano bench, and her fingers launch into tranquil melodies, all nice technicalities that belong in a Bach invention, or something from the baroque era of music.

_Is there anything she isn't good at?_ Meena thinks to herself, fingers fidgeting in frustration. _Because it sure isn't playing an instrument, it sure isn't having loyal friends, and it sure isn't being the most popular girl in school. _She exchanges a look with Kristen who sits in the first chair of the violin section, legs daintily crossed, a Stradivarius violin situated between her legs, one hand resting on a bow which dangles off the edge of a music stand, so delicate that it could break with a gentle snap. Meena had been Kristen's piano accompaniment for the Solo/Ensemble concert, and needless to stay, Meena had screwed up — it had been something between the combination of nerves and panic.

Kristen focuses her attention on 'little-miss-perfect' who gives a delicate curtsy, amber eyes flickering with scrutiny as she passes over Meena, smiling because now everybody knows that she's the best.

.

Meena's never had the best luck with boys — she probably never will.

Her first crush had been on a boy by the name of Cameron Fisher, with the floppy back hair and mismatched eyes that only added to his mysterious appearances through a foreign exchange program; she had accidentally told Heather via sticky notes in the back of history class that she liked him, and Heather, being the best friend that she's meant to be, and choked on her orange-flavored Gatorade and yelled Cameron's name as though saying the words were a death wish, like saying You-Know-Who's real name.

She sits in the back of her gym class, legs crossed upon one another, and then shifts them awkwardly to the side — her skinny jeans hug bulbous thighs, and Meena adjusts her ivory colored headband once more, wondering whether the genuine golden necklace which spells out her name is perhaps a bit too pretentious for the world of eighth grade. Then again, knowing Octavian Country Day and its' female population with their effortless ability to wear even more and more ostentatious bling, she wouldn't be too surprised if a gold necklace was something as common as donning a pair of UGGs in a normal high school.

_Stand up! _commands the gym teacher, a rather large woman by the name of Mrs. Womack who claims to be something of a Hawaiian princess with ancient Chinese ancestry; Meena rolls her eyes and manages to prop herself up with the eight-wheel skates, and clutches upon the chair in the middle of the room. Everybody else disbands into their own individual friend groups, and she wonders whether she should have taken up her mother's offer to ask Principal Burns to change her gym class to somewhere she could actually have friends.

Making friends was something of an unknown feat, especially at Octavian Country Day. Meena closes her eyes for a moment, breathing in deeply, and exiting the inner circle to join the rest of the co-ed gym class, who skates as though they're figure skaters from the Olympics (and Meena wouldn't be too surprised if some of them ended up doing just so). The music stops suddenly, and she crashes into something that feels like a wall, and upon feeling something akin to polyester fabric, her cheeks turn an unnecessary shade of flushed red, something that can seriously not be attractive, and she stumbles backwards, trying not to fall upon her back. _Uh, sorry, _she mumbles, not looking up at the figure in front of her.

_It's okay, _he replies, with an easy-going smile. _Hey, I think that I've seen you before - do you have Cagney eighth hour?_

_Uh, yeah, _she murmurs, making eye contact with Derrick Harrington for the first time; Meena immediately glances down once more. She doesn't understand how all the other girls, all of her other friends can talk to guys as though they're just their friends. She just feels awkward around them, and gives unnecessary rambling speeches all the while making a fool out of herself - nothing different than usual. _What did you think of the test today? _Her few conversations with the male gender revolve around either homework problems or test comparison rankings.

He does that guy-nod thing and Meena feels the urge to shy away from the obvious awkwardness — she's not quite sure why Derrick Harrington is even talking to her in the first place. Guys with bodies like that don't talk to girls with faces like hers; maybe it's some sort of charity-case thing, she thinks. _Pretty good; the answers for the first four questions were D,A,B, and C, right?_

Meena nods, a little shocked, _Yeah; did you get the answer cheat-sheet from Chirag, or something? _There isn't another possible way that somebody like a jock could excel in grades as well; it wasn't quite fair, that some people could be naturally talented in everything, and others would try for all of their life, and still never be even close. She feels the stare of amber eyes embedded into her back, and the sound of skates on the ice rink return to the back of her ear as the teacher switches the music back on.

_C'mon Derrick, _Massie murmurs into his ear as she passes, and Derrick gives a halfhearted wave as a parting, never looking back once and Meena thinks that it's unfair that some people have everything, and she has nothing.

.

Glazed over eyes ransack the canvas in her bedroom, deteriorating the work of art combined with the delicate handiwork (it'll never be good enough, though, despite the lessons and the tutors) smelling like a secondhand bookstore, audible sighs heard as she heat is forcefully applied onto bare skin, folds of cellulite brushing against one another as the day spins away into nothing, hours flying by.

Meena wipes the tears that form in the corner of her eye with the palm of her hand, in a hurried and agitated attempt to stop them from follow; it's not fair, it's not fair at all. All of the other girls can just eat whatever junk food that they want to and wear swimsuits without feeling self-conscious. They don't have to worry about keeping calorie logs and making sure that their tank tops brush past mid-thigh so that their own mother won't make remarks about how arranged marriages will only function if she's well-educated and ninety pounds.

One of Meena's legs is draped upon the mahogany coffee table, and her left hand stretches out the barely forming double chin with her molten black eyes staring in something akin to envy at the computer screen. Days like this, she burrows herself below comforters with a bowl of grapes and several boxes of Kleenex and it's rather painful to watch the cartoons where the characters solve their problems with magic under thirty minutes.

Meena thinks that magic doesn't exist because it's not as though sue hasn't tried to be the _skinnyperfectpretty_ daughter that her mother so deeply desires, because she has. Three week diets and the weight just came rushing back with negative results and the looks of disappointment at the dinner table when Meena reaches for second servings, refusing to drink the herbal liquids that will stimulate weight loss.

One day or another, she inhales the brown-colored liquid and squirms at its retched taste but it doesn't matter how it tastes going down, because when it comes back out — and it always will — the taste will be a million times worse.

(Her mother tells her to follow society darling Massie Block's example as she has 'such a darling figure' and Meena thinks that that's the final straw —)

Because it's sort of exhausting being constantly critiqued but even worse, her mother brings up the point of Massie Block, the golden girl and society darling who's never done a single thing wrong in her life and is unconsciously better than all the underlings who flock around their queen with exuberant apprehension.

Her parents have always said that she'll find where she belongs — whether it's as an ophthalmologist or a dermatologist or a plastic surgeon or any high-paying medical job — but Meena thinks otherwise. Some people just don't belong anywhere and they're just forever lost, blinding grasping for a home that isn't their own.

But she'll keep up the pretense, just for the rote routine of her life. When Meena was younger, she used to be really good at memorizing history textbooks word for word and she thinks that memorizing her daily routine might make it the slightest bit easier. So, she closes her eyes, bottles up her emotions, releases them upon the pillow at night and smooths them away in the morning and then Meena looks like the _perfectprettyskinny _daughter she must be.

.

Her parents start being so _perfectprettyWestchester_ three weeks later.

Her mother finds her father coming home late every night, reeking of lavender and a smell akin to jasmine, and it takes about a week for a divorce settlement to roll around; on occasion, Meena finds her mother injecting vials of liquids into her arms, lying down on the bed and yelling in the middle of the night, various nightmares, all upon which she wakes up to a much harsher reality, and there's nobody left to take of her, not anymore. Meena hears her mother's screams one night, echoing throughout the insulated mansion, and doesn't bother to wipe the crust out of her eyes, instead opening the door to the master bedroom. Her mother writhes between empty bed-sheets (there are still two pillows side by side, and the room looks desolate and empty) crying, screaming out for help.

Meena takes a deep breath and walks over to the bed, sitting where her father used to sleep, and strokes a hand over her mother's hair, shaking her shoulders to wake her up. _Mom, mom? _She murmurs, slowly, growing frantic with each word; her mother's eyes snap open and then she breaks down, suddenly. _It's going to be okay, mom, _Meena murmurs in a reassuring tone, enveloping her mother in a hug. Her mom used to smell like Indian spices and Claire de la Lune perfume. She smells like desolation and drugs, now.

The roles have switched from mother to daughter, and Meena thinks that she would give anything to being invisible again.

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Three years later, Meena still has the same rocky road bulbous thighs, and lets them press down into the chair in the Harvard campus, seated across from someone who looks responsible enough to be the Dean of Admissions, with a somewhat stern yet nonchalant glare, thin-rimmed glances balancing off the edge of a slanted nose, eyes staring into hers, the intensity as though they're trying to peer into her soul. The man sits back in his chair then, legs crossed, and swirling the leather chair a bit, setting down her lengthy file, as though it's of no significance, not one bit. _Meena Shah, is it?_

_Yes, that's my name, _she replies quickly, trying to take a deep breath as though this isn't the most auspicious moment of her life and curses herself for sounding so stupid. Stupid girls don't make it into Harvard. Unless they're rich. Or famous — there are a lot of exceptions to all rules, anyways. _I mean, that's what parents named me, anyway. _Yes, like that sounds so much better.

_Anyway, Meena, what brought you to Harvard today?_

She takes a minute, trying to pretend as though this isn't a completely rehearsed response, because it is. Everything about her life is rehearsed and planned out, because Meena thinks that if she had been the _perfectprettyskinny_ daughter that her parents had always wanted, none of this wouldn't have happened; her father wouldn't have gone into debt, her mother wouldn't have gone insane, everything would be perfect. Or at least normal. Normal was good enough for Meena - perfection, of course, was a dream, and dreams didn't come to true for girls like her. _It was my parents' dream for me, from before I was born — to go to Harvard, to get a good degree, to marry into a good Indian family. And, as they lost focus of that dream, it sort of began to be something that I held onto._

The Dean of Admissions nods, jotting down something on expensive-looking paper. _And, if I may ask, why exactly did you get suspended from school?_

_When I was younger, I was that 'little-miss-perfect' girl, who always got all A's, maybe a B in math but then the tutor would always help. On the weekends, I would go shopping with my mom and work at the horse farms downtown - they loved me. And then, we couldn't afford a tutor . . . the horses lost all of their hair, and my mom sort of lost her mind. It wasn't long before I got expelled and everything sort-of-crashed. At some point, I stopped being 'little-miss-perfect' and I wasn't really anybody anymore. When I was younger, my mom used to tell me that everybody belongs somewhere. Maybe not everyone - maybe some people just get lost trying to find their way, _she rambles on and on, trying to say something, anything that will get here into Harvard. _I thought that this campus could be some place that I could belong to, a family that I've always wanted._

And, then the interview's over; two weeks later, Meena finds herself standing outside of the small apartment, running down the flight of stairs and grabs the packet right out of the mailman's hand, eager with anticipation. The box is small - small is never good, she thinks to herself; small boxes usually have a letter of rejection and maybe some things that she could have improved upon to get into Harvard, or any Ivy League, for that matter. Large boxes were something attainable — they had merchandise from the college, a series of books, maybe a check for scholarship money, and most importantly, the series of acceptance letters and congratulations. _  
_

She walks upstairs into the apartment, and sits on the cold tiled kitchen floor, and opens the letter and thinks that she's going to throw up. _Congratulations, Meena Shah. We welcome you into the Harvard class of 2017 — _and Meena doesn't think that it's possible to feel so happy.

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**oh also should i write massie's part to this? xx clara**


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